Learning to speak and read a language is challenging both for children and adults alike. Young children learning their native language for the first time often encounter difficulty mastering the pronunciation of certain letters. In addition, many young children have difficultly combining the letters to pronounce entire words and phrases. Slow language development can have detrimental effects on a child's social development and academic performance.
For older children and adults, learning a second language also presents challenges. The sounds of individual letters in the second language may be strange or foreign to the learner, making the them difficult to pronounce. In addition, even if the learner is able to pronounce individual letters, the learner may have difficulty remembering the pronunciations and combining them to pronounce an entire word. The learner may eventually become frustrated by slow progress, and give up study of the second language.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a language learning system to assist the user in associating letters with corresponding pronunciations in a manner that is both enjoyable and effective in teaching the language.